As described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/444,510 incorporated herein by reference, FIG. 1 illustrates two sources of electromagnetic radiation 10, 20 radiating collimated beams 12, 22 of electromagnetic radiation at two separate frequencies, f1 and f2, and in two intersecting directions that produce interference at a distance. Generally, when two electromagnetic beams of different frequencies converge, the volume of the intersection 24 will include a frequency component which is equal to the difference in frequency of the two beams, which is defined herein as the interference difference frequency, Δf. More specifically, the electromagnetic interference at the interference difference frequency, Δf, is optimal in that the electromagnetic interference field strength is at a maximum when the beams are diffraction limited and collimated having substantially equal intensities and either linearly or circularly polarized. When the interference difference frequency is incident upon electronic components at or near the interference frequency, the resultant field will interfere with the operation of the electronics.
The interference difference frequency, Δf, is generated by intermodulation, which is defined as the production in an electrical device of currents having frequencies equal to the sums and differences of frequencies supplied to the device. In this regard, intermodulation occurs through nonlinear surface and volume effects (such as oxide layers, corroded surfaces, etc.), also by nonlinear electronic circuit parts and components, such as diodes, transistors, which are parts of all integrated circuits, receiver front-ends, and other circuit parts that may resonate with either or both the main and difference frequencies that are projected. For example, when the collimated and coherent outputs of two distinct millimeter wave sources are 100 GHz and 101 GHz, the electromagnetic field at the intersection 24 will include a 1 GHz component. Physically, the interference pattern created in the volume of the intersection of collimated parallel polarized beams is a fringe field where the fringe planes are parallel to one another. The fringe planes are traveling in a direction perpendicular to the planes at the rate of the interference difference frequency, i.e. difference between the frequencies. The fringe planes are separated by the fringe period, Δf, which is determined by                               λ          f                =                              λ            o                                2            ⁢                                                  ⁢            sin            ⁢                                                  ⁢                          θ              2                                                          (        1        )            where λ0 is the average wavelength of the two collimated beams, and θ is the angle of intersection between the two collimated beams. As can be seen, the fringe period depends upon the angle of intersection of the intersecting beams. Additionally, when the beams are at substantially equivalent field strengths, full amplitude modulation of the interference field will be achieved.
FIG. 2 illustrates an alternate method to converge electromagnetic beams at a distance in a special case of the converging angle θ=0. Two electromagnetic radiation sources 30, 40 radiate collimated beams 32, 42 of electromagnetic radiation at two separate frequencies, f1 and f2, and in the direction of a polarization beam combiner. The polarization beam combiner combines orthogonally polarized beams by reflecting one beam and permitting transmission therethrough of the other beam. The resultant output is therefore the combined beams of both collimated beams 32, 42 having an interference difference frequency as described above. Again, for example, if f1=100 GHz and f2=101 GHz, the resultant interference difference frequency Δf=1 GHz. In contrast to the above description, however, the intersection angle, θ, between the two beams is reduced to zero. As such, the fringe period has become infinite, that is to say that there are now no fringes and no spatial variation of intensity in any plane perpendicular to the direction of beam propagation.
In a typical arrangement, the polarization beam combiner 34 is oriented at 45 degrees with respect to the beams (32, 42 in FIG. 2). The polarization beam combiner 34 is rotated to transmit the linearly polarized incident beam 42 with the minimum of loss. The other beam (32 in FIG. 2) will be polarized orthogonal to the first beam to obtain maximum reflection and minimum transmission loss through the polarizer. Once these two beams are combined, they are superimposed and may be directed. That is to say that both beams 32, 42 are transmitted within one effective beam rather than separate converging beams (as described in FIG. 1), and the resultant interference zone 44 is the volume occupied by the merged beams, from the polarizer and beyond.
While a linear polarization beam combiner 34 has been discussed above other embodiments of beam combiners, known to those of ordinary skill in the art, including beam splitters, circular polarization beam combiners, and the like may be substituted accordingly. Additional information relating to superimposition of electromagnetic beams is further described in the background, above, and in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/444,510 incorporated herein by reference.
Having developed methods of effectively combining electromagnetic beams at distant locations, it would be desirable to utilize the difference frequency generated in these interactions. In particular, due to efficiencies of better diffraction limited beams at higher, optical frequencies, it would be useful to down-convert higher frequencies for re-radiation of the lower frequencies.
As used herein, several terms should first be defined. By definition, microwaves are the radiation that lie in the centimeter wavelength range of the EM spectrum (in other words: 1<λ<100 cm, that is, the frequency of radiation in the range between 300 MHz and 30 GHz, also known as microwave frequencies). Electromagnetic radiation having a wavelength longer then 1 meter (or frequencies lower then 300 MHz) will be called “Radio Waves” or just “Radio Frequency” (RF). For simplicity in this disclosure, the RF spectrum is considered to cover all frequencies between DC (0 Hz) and 300 MHz. Millimeter Waves (MMW) are the radiation that lie in the range of frequencies from 30 GHz to 300 GHz, where the radiation's wavelength is less than 10 millimeters. Finally, electromagnetic frequencies from 300 GHz to 30 THz are described as submillimeter waves, or terahertz frequencies. Anything above 30 THz are considered as optical frequencies (or wavelengths), which includes infrared (IR) and visible wavelengths. The optical range is divided into bands such as infrared, visible, ultraviolet. For purposes of this disclosure, millimeter and submillimter frequencies are described throughout, however, these same principles apply to submillimeter and smaller (higher frequency wavelengths), therefore submillimeter, as used herein, can include optical frequencies. As known to those of ordinary skill in the art, for practical purposes the “borders” for these above these frequency ranges are often not precisely observed. For example, a cell phone antenna and its circuitry, operating in the 2.5+ GHz range is associated with RF terminology and considered as part of RF engineering. A waveguide component for example, covering the Ka band at a frequency around 35 GHz is usually called a microwave (and not a MMW) component, etc. Accordingly, these terms are used for purposes of consistently describing the invention, but it will be understood to one of ordinary skill in the art that alternative nomenclatures may be used in more or less consistent manners.